BOTANICAL GARDENS PUERTO DE LA CRUZ TENERIFE

One of the most enjoyable places to pass some time in Puerto is the exuberant, exotic and colorful Botanical Gardens on the edge of town. It's the perfect place to rest out of the sun, grab a cool moment of tranquility, or enjoy a serene park bench picnic. Here hundreds of intriguing plant varieties grow in profusion, set in a peaceful shady park of only some 2.5ha. In places, roots, branches and twisting trunks form a fascinating sculptural tangle. Almost everything in the gardens is a native of some other land, the focal point being a huge 200 yearold fig tree, brought here as a sapling from South America. Today it rears up on an astonishing platform of roots. Like the other plants, it has truly flourished in this foreign soil, in an unarguable testimony to the benign climate and conditions of the island.

The gardens were set up in 1788 by King Carlos III as part of an experiment to see if it was possible to acclimatise plants to live in other climate zones. The intention was to see if useful varieties growing in tropical colonies could be 'trained' to survive in the mainland of Spain. The question was reasonable at the time, for it was not known how or why plant species live only in certain parts of the planet. The correct name of the Jardin Botanico to this day is EI Jardin de Aclimatacion de La Orotava (La Orotava Acclimatisation Garden).

The range of species is prodigious, and includes several hundred plant varieties some of which can also be seen at the Bananera EI Guanche.  Pepper trees, breadfruit trees, cinnamon trees and tulip trees mingle with coffee bushes and mango trees. Lovers of exotic flowers will be thrilled by the splendid hothouse orchids.

Tropical plants that thrived in these gardens were then taken to similar Royal Gardens at Madrid and Aranjuez in Spain to see whether after their spell of adapting to the climate in Tenerife they could 'learn' to survive on the mainland. For most mainlands Spain proved simply too cold in winter and the results were broadly unsuccessful. It is now better understood that while some plants can prosper away from home others cannot; for most of the exotics growing in the Jardin Botanico, Tenerife was as far as they were willing to travel. Many other varieties that were brought here failed to put down roots even in Tenerife.